Green Power Sports Tour 2008

One man. One veggie-oil powered car. Four months. 20,000 miles. Today Joe Connor, freelance sports-writer, leaves San Diego for his 3rd Annual Green Power Sports Tour, kicking off at a pre-season Raiders game in Bakersfield. Loaded down with a trunk, backseat and shotgun full of reserve veggie-oil, Connnor combines his two loves (sports and traveling), with promoting alternative-fuel vehicles.

For the next four months, Connor will just about attend a game a day, including college football, pro-baseball, pro-hockey and pro-basketball. "I've been to every single baseball stadium in the US," Connor said, and "and after this trip I'll have seen just about every stadium of the four major US sports."Prior to the trip, Connor finds veggie oil and biodiesel stations along his route, but admits that there might be a few times when he has to get diesel just due to the lack of infrastructure in some areas. That is one of the downsides of a veggie-oil car, the others being "its just plain messy - this is not for everybody," the system takes up space and maintenance on the foreign-made diesel cars can be expensive.

What does Connor think about the future of veggie-oil cars? Well, I like to call it the cereal analogy: when you go to a grocery store, you have a lots of choices, but with a gas-powered car, you have one choice: gas, and thats it. Pretty soon we're going to have electric, hybrid, veggie-oil, biodiesel, diesel, gas, and who knows what else. The future is a potpourri of all of these things, and it will break up the "monopoly" and has to drive down prices.

Connor first purchased the car in 2005 after Katrina. The San Diego native saw that there were lines at his local gas stations, and it made him ask "what in the world is going on." The next day he saw a commercial for a veggie-oil powered car and the rest is history.

Last year, Connor found himself with a few blown fuses in a small town in Wisconsin over the weekend. "There was no one to fix my car until Monday so I had to crash at this frat-house for a few days. Whew!"

If you have more questions about biodiesel or want to check out his two-tank veggie-oil car yourself, you can find his schedule online and see his car either on the main-concourse of the stadium or out among the tailgaters.